This invention relates to a lifting mechanism for wheel chairs. More particularly the invention is directed to a lifting mechanism for moving wheel chairs and their occupants into a stable position within a motor vehicle.
The concept of utilizing mechanisms for lifting a wheel chair and its occupant into motor vehicle is believed to be well known. Such devices are commonly deficient in numerous respects. Foremost, such lifting devices do not generally securely engage the wheel chair carrying the occupant during the lifting and movement thereof from the ground to the vehicle interior. Slight movements by the occupant do not uncommonly produce a shifting of the wheel chair on the carrying frame, thus commonly producing a precarious tilting of the chair and general instability during the lifting function. Present devices further are not capable of smoothly and sequentially moving the chair, once lifted, from the exterior of the interior of the vehicle. Still further, such presently known devices are incapable of depositing the chair and occupant in a stable position within the vehicle while orienting the chair in the vehicle in a forward direction, all of this without any physical assistance by the chair occupant himself. These seemingly simple achievements must be readily accomplished without physical assistance of the chair occupant for in many instances the chair occupant may be partially or totally paralyzed and therefor incapable of rendering any aid whatever in effectuating the lifting function of the chair, or effectuating orientation of the chair, once lifted, within the vehicle, or in depositing the chair into a fixed position within the vehicle so that the chair itself cannot constitute a hazard to occupants of the vehicle as a consequence of acceleration or deceleration of the vehicle itself.